is this normal Sempervivum Old Copper Hen & Chicks Houseleek

Hi, everyone. My first post. Newbie here and I'm new to the plant world. i have loads of books on plant care, varieties, problem solving, etc but it never fails I cannot find my problem in them. i've lost so much money in plant deaths it's humiliating but i'm determined not to lose more plants, so I have come here for help. So someone, please help! :D ("yes, help us please," said the plants)

I'm recovering from a serious auto accident and on meds that mess w/ my thinking, so please be patient. Plants give me something to "do" while essentially bedridden. if i can't get this group of plants to live i probably won't try again as the money spent is enormous. Though I have a few foliage plants, after research I felt I may do better w/ succulents than foliage so I have more succulents and carnivorous now. I'm a chronic over-water-er & over tend my plants. Good for carnivorous but bad for almost all other plants. (I have a soggy hand....or what would be the plant keeper's equivalent of a "lead foot" referencing someone who loves to drive an automobile fast.) With succulents, i don't have to water much at all, so it's something i remember *not* to do easier than w/ foliage for some reason and the carnivorous plants give me that "tending to" and "watering" feeling. (i'll just go nuts during dormancy when the cp's don't need water.)

Brief History: Because of my previous widespread plant loss, to rid that suspect soil of problems that could have been detrimental to the dead plants, in June i baked all my miracle grow and dead plant soils in my oven at 400 for 1hr to kill any fungus, bacteria, parasites, neutralize the bug control sprays, neem and gognats formula and anything else such as fungus gnat larvae, etc. we won't even go into the smell in the house.

Water: Distilled gallons w/o exception in soil and spray/spritz

Soil and Pot Conditions: For my succulent plants (for most plants honestly), I have a mixture from most to least of:
succulent potting mix (hoffman's),
baked potting mix (miracle grow as mentioned above),
vermiculite (hoffman's),
perlite (hoffman's),
sand (bag says for horticulture and landscaping though i am beginning to suspect it has salt in it from signs on 2 new foliage plants) (unsure of brand - purchased Home Depot),
organic peat moss (epsoma),
bone meal (epsoma),
garden lime granules (epsoma)
activated powdered/ground charcoal.

I combine this mix in a large tub and scoop into pot/planter w/ 1-2" of river stones on the bottom.

Handling: Upon receipt of plants (i ordered selection of 10 varieties, all looked great), i followed seller's directions by allowing them to go 1 week w/o water or tampering to allow them to dry out and settle from shipment. I perform dry transplants.

Potting: I potted Old Copper just as I potted all others. I pulled it out of the shipping pot, supporting plant and roots, allowing old soil to fall away, and while removing centipedes from incoming plant's soil to feed to my carnivorous plants at a later date, I surveyed plant for other bugs/pests or root issues. All appeared fine. Plant fit into the container nicely, nothing had to be forced. All containers for my sempervivum order are the same w/ the exception of 2 for plants that have deeper roots. This one fit nicely into the pot it is in now. It had 2 offshoots, so I made sure they could fit in the bowl, tucked their roots into the soil as well as the umbilicus and once potting was complete, i watered the hen appx 3Tbsp of water and each chick appx 1/2 Tbsp. Because the leaves were dirty from the transfer, i spritzed the plant heavily to get some of the potting mix off the leaves, but this was not a significant amount of water, as the soil never darkened from the liquid.

Current situation: It has been 5 days since the planting. Most others look somewhat as they did when I planted them and some are starting what appears to be the beginning phase of what Old Copper is now. Yet Old copper is the exception taking on this strange look completely w/ both hen and chicks. You can tell pretty quickly what is going on though it is not easy to describe, and i'm sure there is a technical word for it but i've been unable to find it, which is probably why my searches are futile.

Knowing the plants had dried out before transplant and received scarce water on day of transplant, I know they will need some water, so I began to water another small measured amount but decided to research this problem before following through. I did not water Old Copper tonight though 4 others did get water and i hope i didn't screw up.

That's what brings me here and brings you up to date. I've been unable to find if this is a normal behavior for the plant, if this is something that happens if this is a plant that goes dormant, or if this is a sign something is wrong. I truly appreciate any help anyone can give.

I do have and can provide more and possibly better photos.

thanks in advance for your time. i truly appreciate it. I'm so grateful there is a place where a newbie can ask ridiculous questions! i have 4 more plants w/ problems so as soon as my brain lets me think again, i'll be posting those as well. i'll be sure to keep all the smart plant people thinkin! :giggles :)


PS:
Is there a way I can tell if the sand i have is too salty?

Do you think that the old miracle grow soil i baked at 400 for 1hr could be bad? It has been stored (once cooled and dry) in a giant zippy bag. it smells and feels "normal". Do you think the Neem oil (cold pressed), gognats cedar oil based formula or insecticidal soap could still be "in" the soil causing problems for sensitive plants? This was my 1st thought, yet i have 2 foliage plants that are Neem oil sensitive doing rather well in the same succulent mix i'm using.

I'm SURE I can help you with your plants, but the first thing (IMO) you should do is get a better understanding of what part your soil can/will play in your success; then, refine your watering technique.

Is light an issue? I'm sorry if you mentioned it. I'm @ work & only scanned your post.

Try these threads:
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1073399/
and
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1093861/

Al

Al,
Thanks for the links. I am a total *TOTAL* newbie to everything, not to mention a 'creative' person, so I read through the first one and was lost as an easter egg in December. I read the second one and since i couldn't grasp the first, i'm not sure i could understand the dynamics of aerated granulated planting.

I have what i said in the original post to work with. I ordered 2 bags of cactus and succulent mix in order to pull my plants out of the mix they are in now and put them in an un-doctored mix. that's all i can think of to do to save them asap.

seriously i've lost an entire vacation fund worth of money on plants this year and thought i had read and understood enough to get and keep succulents w/ similar needs alive and healthy. i put thought into what i purchased, what i added, how much, etc. i truly did w/ all i had in me, try my very best. and to see my plants stressing and wilting, it's horrible.

i only mentioned this one problem but i've got problems all over my succulent gardens. i just lost a very beautiful succulent container garden that i took time and money to create, not to mention the lives of the plants i killed. i have no idea what took those plants down...the same mix? is there something in my mix that is killing the succulents? it's a huge mystery that is quite frankly making me sicker w/ every plant i see dying.

i know it's too much to ask or suppose that someone could read my situation and magically know what is wrong w/o seeing, but i'm hoping that someone could offer suggestions of things i can reasonably try considering my physical limitations.

as for light, the hen and chicken plants, all of them, get afternoon and evening sun from N, NW, W windows and a skylight. tomorrow i will have a special 2 shelf glass plant stand delivered and then i will be able to make sure more plants get even lighting.

i don't even know how to describe what is happening to the plant in the photo. is it wilting?

i am the world's worst plant serial killer, bar none.

OK - What's wrong is you're using a water retentive soil AND over-watering. Ideally, you would come to understand the importance of aeration/drainage, and the issues that can arise from over-watering. I can give you directions, but the chance for ME making an error is increased if you don't know why I offer the instructions, and the probability that you'll follow the instructions is likely diminished if you don't understand why they're given. Please, don't take my words as a lecture. They're soft encouragement to continue trying to understand WHY you need to look closely at your soil and watering habits. You can always ask any questions you'd like on those threads, and I (or someone else) will answer.

The Hoffman's succulent soil is too water-retentive for succulents - especially since you're heavy-handed on the watering can. My suggestion would be that you mix 1 part of perlite with 2 parts of the Hoffman's, and resist watering until the soil is nearly dry. Plants don't drink or sip water - they absorb it a molecule at a time, so your soil only needs to be damp, not wet. Use a wood dowel (sharpened in a pencil sharpener) stuck into the soil to test for the need to water. Water/moisture meters don't work, so forget that approach. Only water when the dowel comes out cool/clean/dry. Touch it on your wrist or cheek to test for dampness.

I would suggest a 3:1:2 ratio fertilizer, like Miracle-Gro 24-8-16 granular soluble, miracle-Gro 12-4-8 liquid, or (best) Dyna-Gro's Foliage Pro 9-3-6 (probably need to order from online source). If you decide you'd like to follow my advice, I'll help you work out a fertilizer program.

Al

Al
i'm soooooo envious of your container garden. I may talk to you about a unique type container garden i made that recently failed because of overwatering. you may be able to suggest something that could help w/ it.

Ok, back to the Old Copper and now the other multi-colored hen and chicks that are starting to show the same signs as first plant:

Thanks so much for the advice. I'm pretty good at getting advice from one person and sticking to it. In my younger days I was a parrot behaviorist and to this day i sizzle a bit inside when people ask me for free advice, i take the time and effort to give it, then they turn around and seek advice from others w/o even trying my suggestion. After they get loads of advice, they try a behavioral cocktail on their parrot and wonder why it doesn't work. I'm not quite like that. That is one of the reasons i'm horribly frustrated at my plant loss situation as I read sooooo much and decided to follow one source's advice and poof, all my plants are toast. _Twice_.

your suggestion is good. it sounds workable and w/in my budget & physical limitations. Also i'm able to order items online and have delivered to my house. :) I have a great UPS guy who brings items in and puts them on my table for me so I should be good to go & soil is being delivered tomorrow. If the hurricane doesn't wipe me off the planet over the weekend, I will repot in the new soil w/ perlite per your division measurements. I have enough perlite and 2 bags of hoffman's succulent soil being delivered tomorrow. as horrible as it is, in my condition, i live off amazon. if it cannot be delivered, i prolly can't get it. our families pitch in for "prime" so i get "free" 2nd day delivery on almost everything. when i try to buy online from other places and see the insane shipping costs i have to go back to amazon. :(

I have a couple questions for you, especially since i did so much research that has totally turned toxic on me:

1. i know i am heavy handed with the water but i can't wrap my head around this...was 3Tbsp of water literally too much to give to a bone dry plant put into a dry soil mix watered from the top of the soil? That's got my brain spinning trying to figure that out. So very hard for me to believe that so little water for quite a large plant (these hung over 4 and 5" pots) was too much. Ironically, smaller plants that prolly got more water as i put them in groupings are doing a wee bit better, though they are the more compact type like spiderweb and have a deeper bowl.

2. Per your mix, you are skipping the sand. I'm glad to see that, as i've been horribly concerned that the sand i've been using, though it isn't playground sand, has something in it that could be harmful. I had my husband read the bag and it says: Medium coarse all purpose silica sand for gardens, landscapes, winter traction. he said the bag doesn't have an actual "ingredients" list.

3. you are also skipping the other additives like bone meal, lime and charcoal. I'm curious as to why you suggest leaving them out. all the reading i did on container gardening expressed the need to provide nutrients to the soils, which is why i did add them. are they going to be replaced by the fertilizer?

4. i understand refraining on adding any other potting mixes and the peat, because the soil already holds too much moisture. is this the same reason to hold off on the vermiculite?

5. For Hen and Chicks, would you say that my plant has wilted? Is that how that plant would look wilted? If it was underwatered would it look different?

6. After i repot, i'm pretty sure the plants aren't going to be waterlogged as i stuck a chopstick down into them and they aren't wet now. Should i refrain from watering them after repotting? When i watered them after planting, it was not much at all, only a 3 tablespoons each. When watering them, should i target the roots only?

Thanks so much. i appreciate every single character and space you take your experience and time to share.

ps: if someone can show me how to upload pix here, i can take better pix of things. i'm forum illiterate. even tho i subscribed, i still only have the option for a single image upload.

I'll let Al address your other questions since he's our container soil guru, but on the pictures--you can only upload one image at a time, but each time you write a reply, you'll see an option to upload a picture (right underneath the box where you're typing your post, there's a link to choose an image). So if you've got 10 pictures, you reply to yourself 10 times and each time you can put in one more picture.

1) Rather than trying to decide if you were a bad plant mommy (watering), let's give you something to shoot for. The size of your plant material and container + the physical characteristics of your soil + your watering habits should all work together like a finely tuned machine (ok - I exaggerate) so you can fully saturate the soil each time you water but not have to worry about the soil remaining so soggy it mighty cause root rot. Adding the perlite to the Hoffman's is actually a stopgap measure. You can't amend a heavy soil with perlite unless perlite is the largest fraction of the soil. Think 'pudding' - how much perlite do you have to add to pudding to make it drain well? All the perlite is doing is occupying space that would normally had water in it. It doesn't improve drainage or reduce the ht of the PWT - it simply physically limits the amount of water a soil can hold.

2) If the sand is beach sand, it might have lots of salt in it. I suppose it could be contaminated, but who knows? I tend to leave everything out of my soils that impacts drainage/aeration in a negative way. A small fraction (less that 15%) of peat (or compost) are used in one of the soil types I use to adjust water retention, but beyond that, I make sure I START with a large fraction of material composed of larger particles. The illustration of the pudding shows you CAN'T make soils with small particles drain well. The reason I can say that is: if you start with something like compost and start adding perlite, it won't drain well until perlite becomes the largest fraction of the soil, so technically, you're then adding compost to perlite.

3) There is a reason I skipped the ingredients you mentioned. Ground charcoal does nothing for the soil (chemically), and physically it inhibits drainage/aeration. Bone meal in containers breaks down so slowly you may as well consider it insoluble. There are other sources of the nutrients therein contained that are more readily available. You know my feeling on sand. IOW - I think of STRUCTURE first, and nutrition second. Nutrition is simple - structure more complicated, so get THAT right & then worry about nutrition.

4) Vermiculite breaks down readily & adds to water retention. I use it only very rarely in container soils and in small quantities to add water retention. One place I would use it is in bark-based soils in SWCs (self watering containers).

5) It looks wilted & perhaps etiolated (light starved) - hard to tell from here.

6) DO water immediately after repotting. Moisten the soil & then refrain from watering until the soil is dry. I have house leeks growing on pieces of wood and bare rock. I sometimes go a month between watering these alpine plants (unless it rains), so they're pretty drought tolerant. They don't appreciate wet feet. If I remember, I'll provide a pic from home (@ wk now).

If you find out how to load pictures in multiples - be sure to let me know. ;o)

Al

E-crane - there must be a way to tile your pics, because I've seen up to 4 images in a single text box here, though I have no idea how it's done.

Al

The people you see posting collaged photos like that are using their photo editing software to combine multiple pictures into one and then uploading that one collaged photo. If you don't have software that does that, you're stuck with the approach of replying to yourself multiple times and uploading one picture each time. The one caveat with the collaged photos is that if you're trying to show details so that someone can help with ID'ing the plant, figuring out what disease it has, etc the individual photos often end up fairly small in that collage so it becomes hard to see details. So in cases like that where seeing details of the plant(s) is important I think it's better to stick with the more time-consuming uploading of individual pics one at a time.

Got it - thanks. I'd asked this question before, but forgot what the reply was. What you just said sounds very familiar. ;o)

Al

Semps (in gritty mix)

On a rock. This is an old pic - the semps on this rock are a large mass now:

Al

More on a rock:

Al

A tiny pot 'o sedum:

Al

A Mini garden on a piece of lava:

Al

Semps on a board:

Al

Anyway - you get the idea. ;o)

Aeonium in a terra cotta pot:

Al

Oh - here is a little succluent:

Al

Seen here with it's daddy:

Al

I wish I could do that, but I have crappy lighting in my house. The only room with a lot of light is my front, North facing room with floor to ceiling windows and it has one West window, but the trees and carport are there. The lack of light sucks here.
I love that, the acorn one is so cute.

Al, i think the *best* solution for my semp problem is for you to come to my house and raise them. lol. i'm more than impressed especially at the simplicity in which so many of them are obviously thriving at your house/garden. seriously impressed and also in awe at how little these guys need to survive and how easy it is for me to kill them all in less than a week. lol.

i took Al's advice on division of potting mix/perlite and repotted everything. i don't have the fertilizer yet, hoping it will come this week. i will admit i tossed in a tiny bit of bone meal, but a very trace amount. i had to put in some to feel like i was compensating for the loss of the cost of it. laughs. it's crazy but yeah, putting in 1Tbsp into a 2 gallon bag blend of soil & perlite made me feel better about how much i paid for the blasted bag of bone meal though i know it wasn't enough to do much for the plants. looking at the plants now w/o their decorative river rock topping, the soil is more white from the perlite than dark from the soil.

i couldn't put them in the orig pots they were in because they didn't have drainage holes and i was determined to monitor drainage. sure, 3 inches of gravel is great in concept but in practice it isn't always the best way to monitor the roots of the plants.

so far, everything is holding its own. nothing seems to have deteriorated any more yet. but i will say this, as flabergasted as i was and still am...they were wet when i took them out of their pots. so the mix was holding too much moisture, much more than i ever would have guessed with as little water as they received. Seems they held onto every single Tbsp. given on original potting.

regarding Al's repotting and watering - because of the wetness from leaf down into roots, i'm holding off watering anything that was repotted for a while as i have seen that these plants grow well in very dry conditions and i figure they are already going into the new pot moist so the new soil will hopefully absorb some of the water. were they dripping wet, no, but the soil was incredibly moist. repotted saturday and sunday nights so i plan to water a bit this coming weekend, though i will seriously check out the soil before i do anything. again hoping my fertilizer will arrive so that i can apply it when watering.

unfort, instead of each variety having its own pot, i was forced (financially and limited as to what i could get brought/delivered to me on time for the project) to combine several varieties in together in larger pots. so now i have some freakin heavy pots made for trees and patio gardens actually rolled inside my house holding hen and chicks in the blend Al recommended. as long as they live, i don't care what pot they're in. once they are strong again and money presents itself i can always repot and decorate with them as i had envisioned. their lives mean more to me than decor at this point.

i took the time to use the blend to repot all of my plants that had been potted in the soil blend i had described in first post and seemed to have issues w/ the exception of my cactus plants and a couple other plants that so far seem to be holding out ok. i would have repotted everything though except i did run out of perlite. i ordered more, though and sooner or later will make the rounds to redo the other foliage types i have that are in the orig blend that are showing strange signs of burn.

i will take some pix of the situation tomorrow when there is more light and post them. if you have any other recommendations, i'm all ears, but please keep in mind i'm very limited as to what i have access to. ;)

later this fall i plan to get my wooden bowl succulent garden going again, obviously using the new blend of soil and excising all the sand and moisture holders, and adding inches more gravel to accommodate runoff or drilling a couple holes in the bowl for drainage, and talking to tapla and other container garden experts on what would work well together. how i had a gorgeous little feng-shui tabletop centerpiece succulent garden until i killed everything by obvious overwatering & soil blend. i've found that decorative toppings (lava rocks, decorative sand) w/ succulents though pretty can be dangerous as some can hold water too close to the plant stem and also disguise where the water being poured in actually is going underneath. i love lithops and other succulents that look "odd". i have a bamboo bowl w/ 10 lithops in it and a royal flush. i've been told i should avoid lithops as if i have this much trouble w/ semps that lithops won't have a chance in my house. well, i defy the odds and plant death gods as so far in my little lithop bowl, i have some still trying to grow. i'll be if i ever water them again!! laughs. i am, however, prepared for them to die as they were planted in the orig heavy moisture mix w/ the sand. but i'm trying with them. if i see signs of trouble, i'll get them repotted into the new blend when all ingredients get here.

thanks everyone for the time and effort shared w/ me and for my plants. "yes, thank you thank you!," said the plants. i'm hoping my days as a hen and chicks serial killer are gone, though some of my foliage plants, AVs and CPs still look at me accusingly. ;p

i'll take pix and post the current situation and keep updating here as changes occur which i'm sure they will, so that i can be advised on if the changes are a good sign or a bad sign. for example: i have no idea now how to tell when they DO need water!

Beginning of pix after repotting in new blend. Please note that the "odd" one is starting to lose leaves around the top of the plant.

I'll start w/ old copper and it's group.

more

yet a couple more shots to go

main light windows. light comes in these two windows from the northeast and also a western window and skylight lets afternoon sun come in and hit them, as well as some cutting in the window on the left at sunset. This is not how it will look in the end in terms of decor, this is simply me trying to get everything repotted and make sure plants are places they get appropriate light. sooner or later the display area will not be crowded w/ supplies, tho i'm looking more at later than sooner at this point.

i've attempted to post 3 more pix but they aren't showing up in the thread for some reason, perhaps i've timed out. i'll try again later.

I don't know if this is why you were having problems posting pictures, but you always need to type a little text to go along with the picture, and that text can't be exactly the same as one of your other posts. If you try to do it without text or if the text is identical to a previous post then it won't go through.

I have not luck with succs here. Maybe I need to try inside or containers. In ground it does not do well here.

Great thread. As for how to make collages, Google's free picture program is called Picasa. Collages are pushbutton.

Thusly...

Linny

Your plants might not get enough light from the W and NW windows and skylight. If you can place them under a grow light of some kind, that would definitely help. Even putting them close to a lamp with a compact fluorescent bulb would do (I've done that and it works).

From the great pics posted (I love the lava mini-garden), most succulents don't need a lot of soil or coddling. The trick for any kind of plant is mimicking its growing conditions in its native habitat.

Here's a little story that shows you just how tough hen and chicks really are:

Charlemagne was convinced that sempervivums protected thatched cottages from lightning, so he decreed that all rooftops should be planted with them. Dunno if that worked for lightning, but .... the plants got lots of light, had excellent drainage (rainwater scoots right off thatched rooves), and weren't overfed.

Hope this helps.

CapnGottin, veteran gardener now living on a boat, newbie to Dave's Garden

Are the plants in the containers being grown indoors or outside? If outside, do you leave them out in winter? I have various hens/chicks, sedums and other succulent type plants of different sizes and textures growing outside in the ground. They are no fuss, no muss and mostly they just multiply. I planted them in a bed amongst river rocks, and now they are so crowded, you can no longer see the rocks. I will need to dig everything out in the spring and re-do.